Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Skill queue: about f@#%ing time !!!

I've been in EVE for just over a year now but there is one thing that the game was missing from the start and that I still can't believe it's taken more than 5 years to be looked at: there was no skill queue-ing, so if you didn't time your stuff correctly, or your skill ended either during downtime or the wee hours of the morning, or if you plain forgot, YOU WERE GETTING ROYALLY SCREWED! This will change with Apocrypha in March, and about damn time too.

The part that got me floored is where it says that CCP didn't implement a training queue because they were afraid players would become less active... pardon the expression but Bullshit! It was one of the reasons why a lot of potential players just gave up the game; everyone admits it, EVE doesn't have a learning curve but a learning cliff. It's super easy to forget you have to keep training stuff up when you're new at this. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone to have done this: you have a short skill that's finishing but you're caught up in some op or chat or something and like the majority of players the sound is off and you're listening to what's happening on Ventrilo or to some sweet relaxing music like Death Metal or Frank Zappa. Miss that pop-up window saying "Notify: the training of Minmatar Cruiser III is complete", get on a big fat roam of 30+ systems and you've just missed a few hours of training time. Or worse, having to get up in the middle of the night (on a working week of course) when an important skill turns to level V so you can start the important one (specialization anyone?), thereby missing precious sleep and having to go to work all smashed up.

Now, even though my title says "about f@#%ing time" I still don't get the 24-hour skill stacking limit. I understand that the queue will handle skills that are to start in the next 24 hours, but will CCP really lose a number of players from a skill queue? Did I play less when I was training Cruiser V? Or when I was training Medium Projectile Turrets V for the second time because of the second worst noob error (the first worst is covered in the last post)? Hell no! If I could queue up all the support skills for tanking, drones, gunnery, and maybe even some industrial I would play just as much because I'd spend less time fretting over my skill training ending at impossible hours (I'm lucky like that) and I'd just spend time getting better not only in official skills, but also in unofficial ones like being a better tackler, bubbler, damage dealer or FC.

So CCP, thank you for revising your position on a skill queue, but I still say you're holding back too much. You will not lose players if you make training easier... you'll get more !!!

3 comments:

I love the new skills queue addition as well, though I think the 24 hours is completely fine and fair. I don't see any reason at all anyone would need more than 24 hours...for me at least...my only issue with training is having to wake up to change a skill. This makes that go away, so I'm happy now...no need for more than 24 hours...that'll just start making people lazy :D

I agree it is a pain to keep track, but I rotate skills in and out, trying always to have one of 24+ hours on stand-by, for overnights, and one 7+ days in case of holidays, patch days etc. There is, IMHO, always *something* you can learn that takes a while